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February 10, 2004

Nominally meeting the pressPosted by Teresa at 11:48 PM *

More jollification in this gloomy stretch of year (though the weather did improve today): The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart doing a lovely send-up of Bush’s appearance on Meet the Press.

If you missed the actual appearance, be assured that Stewart’s take on it is funny because it’s accurate, not because it’s amusingly distorted. Bush’s unprecedented hour-long interview on Meet the Press—taped in advance, presumably with considerable advance preparation because he’d never agree to anything else, and consisting of an hour of softball questions with no real follow-up on the answers—was nevertheless so bad that it has Andrew Sullivan and Bill O’Reilly publicly reconsidering their support for the administration and the war.

Honest.

Addendum: Avram Grumer points out that the thing is available on Comedy Centralís site in Real Video format.

yup. Bill Maher is on HBO, but thanks for the link! I can't tivo the daily show because it's on so many times in the week it crowds out everything else. I watched the real MTP interview and the Daily Show's editing isn't too much of a stretch from the actual experience of watching it. Yikes, I'll go get my bottle of tequila now and get started.

Having been preoccupied with crap in our basement (I''m still thanking ghu or someone that they dug the 'equipment room' portion of our basement about 2 feet deeper than the rest, our furnace (circulated water) didn't get damaged as well as that was the only room that got really gross) that politics has been the least thing on my mind. Now that our toilets flush (and not into the basement) and we can tak showers, after seeing those bits of the interview, just YIKES. How could such a freaking moron be elected president. YIKES.... (oh, I forgot. He got anointed by the electoral collage after all that vote fraud....Oops._

Melanie, today I was sold the first asparagus of the season, then failed to watch closely as the fruit-cart man picked out a bunch and put it into an opaque plastic bag. Some while after I got to the office, the smell from the bag tipped me off that he'd sold me asparagus that was already going bad.

Foo.

Paula, the rest of the explanation is that he limited his appearances, never, ever spoke extemporaneously if he could avoid it, and whenever possible used hand-picked crowds.

A weird fact I read about Bush some while back: There are no extant specimens of his writing. I mean compositions, not handwriting. That's a very odd thing for a man with his resume.

Then again, not seeing much writing cited on the ol' CV. So maybe not quite so surprising.

(Don't they write papers at the Harvard Business School? Didn't he have to write something to get a bachelor's degree from Yale? Did the paperwork gnomes scour the records of every single professor who ever assigned W. a paper, right after they savaged his military record? Did he not write a single report over the course of his checkered business career? --He wasn't always a two-fingered executive, after all. A memo, even? Jesus, the more I think about this, the more creepy it gets.)

Bill Simmon: you can always set the TiVo to "keep at most 2 episodes"; that's what we do for some shows that are on multiple times a day, especially the ones where the guide data doesn't include episode data, so the TiVo would otherwise record 5 copies of the same freaking episode, grumble grumble....

The Daily Show (rerun at 7pm from the night before) has rapidly become one of our addictions, to the point that we break our informal "eat dinner at the table because it feels more civilized" rule for it.

Our SBS semi-public channel runs the 'Weekly Daily Show' - or did last year (at 10pm). Hoping & waiting to see it back. Compresses a week down to 30 minutes. Would be interesting to see if the full-length version was too thinly-spread. Will keep alert for this version, surely they'd put it in the Condensed version?

BTW, looks like our Letterman Show import is nearly up to date at the moment too. Some weeks back it was two/three months old, now it's actually after Christmas. It is on anywhere from midnight to 3am, so one of those things not too many people bother about I guess. [Too hot & humid to sleep, despite a sky-ripping thunderstorm tonight in Sydney.]

Oh dear. Three versions of version in that last post. From terse to verse to worse :)

In case you're worrying about my being online during thunderstorm, it's died down to simple downpour now.

But I do need a cold shower & to get back to try & get a few more hours sleep. I got all the way to work yesterday (bus-ferry-bus) before I realised I'd put my blouse on inside out, then heard we're being restructured -- again. One needs one's wits at times like this.

If I recall correctly, asparagus is related to bamboo. If it isn't, it ought to be. We used to grow it, and at maximum velocity we could cut spears long enough to eat every day for weeks. Then when you let it go it makes bushes as tall as you are.

I'm sure this video must be hysterically funny. If I click on the first link, I get a blank screen with a QuickTime logo on it, which just sits there. If I click on the RealPlayer link, my web browser crashes.

I made all my friends and loved ones that weren't rabid Republicans (which fortunately is much more than you might think for a girl who grew up in Utah) watch this. Lee laughed his ass off, and then went on to make other people watch it.

Teresa, thanks. Yes, I can understand how now. Just limit his exposure ..... I can also understand why there are no extant examples of his writing... he's a moron.

A friend has a friend who's a White House civil servant, that person says the White House now has the atmosphere of a franternity house, and they have to constantly advise the president's staff and friends to NOT DAMAGE the place, it's a freaking historical landmark. Just heresay, but that's what I've heard.

Noonless, next time I plant asparagus I will plant a lot rather than three roots.... (did that two years ago, took care of it and all I got were three slender plants, whacked down by the new lawn guy we hired.... we'll see if they come back this spring, if they do, we'll add reinforcements...)